Retirement update

We have enough saved and set it up to ride out down turns in the stock market. We have it set up that payments will come in at 3 different times(we will have 3 different accounts )a month instead of just the first of the month and only once a month. I heard from a lot of retirees this is a hard adjustment. Dad has his set on 2. Mom O has hers on 3. Social Security comes in at the first of the month.

I take a sheet of notebook paper each month and deduct ALL the expenses out as I pretty much know what my utilities average and I use the HIGH side of that average. BEFORE we start even thinking of getting groceries or gas or spending money. IT took me a year (we were in a bankruptcy) to save 3 months expenses so I could put in the checking and deduct everything BEFORE we even got our first retirement check (which is Jan 10th). How I did this was add up monthly bills MINUS the things we could go without (Amazon prime, sam's club, netflex -we don't have cable, no groceries and only 2 tanks of gas, health ins costs. Times it by 3 and divided it by 52 as I knew I had a year to save it up. THAT amount was paid into ALLY bank so we wouldn't use it on a automatic withdrawl just like it was a weekly bill. I then added what ever I could save into our regular savings also and stocked piled using sales and coupons.

We still haven't settled on additional savings plan , key requirement when you retire and look at living another 30 some years as several in Hubby's family have lived over 100 and he's not 60 until next year. We have decided only 1 acct will be pulled from for now especially with buying a house and rehabbing it. We don't want to get into the mind frame of Ok we saved what we budgeted so we can spend the rest attitude at times we could save MORE.NOR do we want to run out and buy a ton of things for the new house. (FRUGALWOODS WEB SITE)

CHANGE IN HEALTH INS...OH HEAVENS help me from pulling my hair out... Hubby's company changed ins providers that take affect 1/1/2018 for employees.BUT he retired 12/1/2017 so should have been put on retirement health ins 1/1/2018....NOOOOOO some reason they put the wrong date in and it's going to be end of Jan  before that gets switched so I had to fill out paperwork FOR employee to make sure we HAD ins and then will have to do retiree paperwork. AT least they are making sure we are COVERED. Health ins money will go into a money market fund so I can keep that separate from the rest.

We are tracking each month what we spend in gas and where we are going. We know we will be going to visit parents more often and doing things with kids/grandkids. BUT we can't afford to just run all the time (the medical appts and retirement appts have worn us out this month). MOVING will be costly. We are pricing different ways to get it done.

With Daughter moving home (Pray for her as she has 2 places that should open up for her to rent in Jan) will increase the utilities but she brings enough leftovers home from her lunch at work that she covers her own dinners. She has offered to pay for the increase.

I can give myself a headache thinking the changes that will happen in the coming year.

Blessed Be